


Speak Softly and Carry a Fake Stick

by Idle_Hans



Series: AU is a Measure of Distance [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24872593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idle_Hans/pseuds/Idle_Hans
Summary: Prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance, Potter.That goes ditto, Dumbles.
Series: AU is a Measure of Distance [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799656
Kudos: 43





	Speak Softly and Carry a Fake Stick

"Why aren't you using your wands?"

Sirius was standing in the doorway with a puzzled expression on his face as he watched Harry, Hermione and Ron attempting to clean the room without magic.

"Because I'm up on a charge of underage magic already?", replied Harry.

"Harry," said Sirius, "you're in Grimmauld Place. Even without the Fidelius this is one of the most heavily warded buildings in southern England. You three could fire off _unforgivables_ and the Ministry wouldn't detect it!"

Harry looked at Sirius carefully. "Are you really sure?"

Sirius nodded. "The house gets rebuilt every few hundred years, but my ancestors have lived on this site since before Roman times, and they've wanted outsiders not to know what's going on here for just as long." 

"Well in that case," asked Harry with a grin, "is there a book of household charms anywhere? We could tell Ron's mum it's extra-curricular study."

Sirius had a matching grin and was about to reply when Hermione interrupted.

"Harry, even if Sirius is right, you can't risk doing any magic until after the hearing tomorrow. What if they cast _Priori incantatum_ on your wand to prove it was your Patronus? If they found anything unexpected they'd snap your wand for sure."

The name of that spell took Harry back to his graveyard battle with Voldemort, which he'd survived solely through the sheer luck of owning the brother to the dark lord's wand.

"What if I lose the case anyway? What if they do decide to snap it? I'm only alive because my wand is that wand."

Ron spoke up. 

"Okay Sirius, as well as the book on household charms, are there any old Black family wands in this house? Maybe one that looks enough like Harry's that he could take it to the hearing and pretend it's his?"

The grin returned to Sirius's face. 

"Where do you think I got this one from?", he said while holding up his own wand. "There's whole drawers full of them. No one in their right mind ever throws out an old wand in working order. Come on, this way."

Sirius led the others along the corridor to a door which he unlocked with his wand, and opened with a flourish. The small room beyond was something like a silver closet, except that the glass-fronted cupboards were full of things far stranger than any tableware Harry had ever seen. Sirius pulled open three large shallow drawers all side by side which turned out to be nearly full of wands lying in purpose-built storage racks. Each wand had a small tag tied to it, showing the name of this or that person along with the characteristics of the wand.

"Where's your wand, Harry?" 

"It's upstairs."

"Fetch, boy."

Harry smiled at the dog joke and ran upstairs to the room where he and Ron slept. He grabbed his wand from his trunk and went back down to where Sirius, Hermione, and Ron were waiting.

Sirius pointed to an empty rack position in the middle of the centre drawer. "Harry, lay your wand there, then rest your fingers on it and cast a lumos."

Harry did as asked, but when he murmured " _Lumos_ ", it wasn't the tip of his wand that lit up. Instead, the tips of several other wands lit up; some faintly, some brightly.

"Okay," said Sirius, indicating the three or four most brightly lit wands. "These ones are the wands most magically compatible with you, and as soon as you've got your OWLs I'll be letting you choose one of those as a spare wand. But this one here," and Sirius picked up a wand whose faintly lit tip was softly pulsing,

"This is the wand whose magical signature is most similar to yours. This is the one you're taking to the Ministry tomorrow."

Sirius nodded his head to where Harry was still putting magic into his wand.

"Nox," he prompted.

"Oh," said Harry, " _Nox_." The other wands went dark. He lifted his own wand out of its resting place and Sirius pushed the drawers shut.

"But that doesn't look anything like my wand. It's not even the same length," said Harry of the wand in his godfather's hand.

"Doesn't matter," answered Sirius. "Ex-auror, remember? And Tonks and Shack are current aurors. We know what the equipment at the security desk looks for. You spend the rest of the morning using this wand to practise all the spells you admit to having performed in your last week of school, then you'll cast one Patronus, and then I'll transfigure the wand until Tonks, Shack, and I agree it'll pass inspection."

"Can a transfigured wand perform magic?" asked Hermione.

"Not very well," said Sirius, "but Harry's facing a hearing for performing magic outside of school. They won't be asking him to do any more of it."

* * *

  
Dumbledore hid it well, but he'd been blindsided. A last-minute change of place and time was a trick he'd expected, but the upgrade from a disciplinary hearing in front of Amelia Bones to a full trial in front of any and all Wizengamot members as just so happened to be present in Courtroom Ten at eight in the morning, when the Wizengamot normally convened at ten o'clock on an entirely different floor of the Ministry, that had taken him by surprise. Dumbledore knew at first glance that nearly all those present were his political opponents and/or people he knew or suspected to support the pureblood agenda. The numbers were clearly stacked against Harry, and the chances of this lot accepting the word of a squib as the sole evidence for the defence were very poor indeed.

_Crack!_

Auror Dawlish dropped the two pieces of the snapped wand onto the floor at the centre of the chamber and then stepped back. Madam Bones stood up, and with a grim look on her face she cast _Incendio_ on them.

"Mr Potter, that concludes the proceedings of this hearing. You may go."

* * *

  
When Mr Weasley dropped him back at Grimmauld Place, Harry stepped into the kitchen to find everyone having morning tea.

"Oh Harry dear, how did it go?" asked Mrs Weasley anxiously. "You got an owl from the Ministry just a little while ago."

"That'll be the letter giving me ample notice that the hearing was rescheduled to be a full trial in front of the Wizengamot in a different location an hour earlier," replied Harry sarcastically as he sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. He took a deep breath and let it out in a huff of anger mixed with relief. Anger at the injustice of what had happened to him, and relief that a certain holly and phoenix feather wand hadn't been involved.

"Fudge ruled that Mrs Figg's evidence was inadmissible and that Professor Dumbledore had no standing to appear for me since as headmaster he had a conflict of interest somehow. I've been convicted and fined more money than I think I've actually got, they've expelled me from Hogwarts, and they've snapped my wand." Well, to be precise the Ministry had snapped the wand of Ursula Black née Flint, but those in the know had kept that to themselves so far. "The Trace — whatever that is — has been made semi-permanent on me, and I'm forbidden under penalty of imprisonment in Azkaban to practise magic anywhere in the British Isles for the next fifteen years."

The general chorus of sympathetic outrage did not extend to his godfather.

"Well," said Sirius, "you clearly got up someone's nose for all that to happen. Congratulations." And he raised his teacup in a salute. "Meanwhile, us travesties of justice should stick together. Feel like going into exile with Remus and me? We'll empty the Black family's Gringotts vault and take all the less horrible books from the library here with us, along with anything useful you and Remus can find in Flourish & Blotts. When we get somewhere warm and sunny you can study for the ICW Baccalaureate surrounded by a complete absence of Dementors, Death Eaters, or daftly determined officials. The Trace only works in the country it was first imposed, and once you've got the Baccalaureate, you'll have wand rights everywhere in the world except Britain. So, how 'bout it?"

Harry tried to look thoughtful, but a grin kept bursting through.

"I think you've talked me into it."


End file.
